Four Blue Corners
by Siachi
Summary: The realisation that after you've saved the world, time doesn't stop. The gang is breaking up, and having to deal with all the discoveries they made during the war.
1. Chapter 1

Four Blue Corners

**Squall**: I sit down in the circle of chairs, balancing my wine glass while I do so. The others are already seated and talking, except Rinoa, who has obviously been waiting for me to show. I give a quick grin to reassure her I'm alright as I settle comfortably into the leather cushions of the seat.

It feels funny being here tonight, the day after the day after we saved the world. I almost didn't come. I thought a lot about the old me, of going back, of switching off again. I couldn't do it. You can't go back to the way things were once you've changed. Even if you act the same, you'll always be aware that something happened, that there is another way.

I look over the rim of my glass at the others while I take a sip, trying to fix their faces in my memory. Irvine is leaning forward conspiratorially towards the girls. He is making Selphie laugh over something, probably another one of his outrageous stories. He even has Quistis hiding a smile behind her hand. Zell is twitching in his seat and eying the bar, clearly a bit bored. Another couple of beers and he'll start to relax and loosen up. Rinoa is nibbling a strand of her hair absently, listening to Irvine, Selphie and Quistis talk.

I watch Rinoa, deliberately losing myself for a little, watching the movement of her face. It weaves a little as she follows the story, some old battle of ours. She frowns a little, and launches into some vital correction of one of Irvine's points, starting a good-natured argument involving much arm-waving and gesticulating. Someone says something by my ear and they turn to look at me. Yikes. Rinoa hates it when I just stare at her.

"What?" I blurt intelligently.

"I said, 'Do you remember, Squall?'" she repeats, watching me with a knowing look.

"He's not heard a word that's been said in the last five minutes!" Zell laughs next to me "He's ignoring us all again to watch you, Rinoa."

Note to self: Kill Zell.

"Oh, Squall!" she says reprovingly "At least make an effort to speak to your friends. It's our last evening together."

But her tone is forgiving. I give her my best lost puppy look and am rewarded with a roll of the eyes and a touch of a smile on her lips.

Quistis, Chief Instructor Trepe now, I remind myself, salutes me with her glass and takes a sip.

"It's strange, knowing we're going away after tonight, isn't it? Where will we all be in six months time? What will we all be doing?" she asks reflectively.

I'm wondering too. We've all been hiding these last few days, dodging the upcoming separation. The… whirlwind that swept us all up, flung us all together and carried us all over the world is now scattering us back to the four corners of the globe again. I mean, we saved the world. Then we came back, and the world said "Well done. Now what?"

Tomorrow Quistis leaves to take up her new responsibilities in Balamb Garden. Zell is vanishing off to see his parents for the first time in months. Selphie is returning to Trabia Garden, to lead the reconstruction effort. Irvine is going with her. As newly promoted Military Director of all SeeD forces, I'm stuck overseeing the creation of the new company headquarters here in Esthar City. Esthar Garden. That name has an odd ring to it. Esthar was unreachable for all of my lifetime. 

"I always thought that if I survived, I'd just get to go quietly back to teaching," continued Quistis musingly "And now I turn round and find that I have powers no one has ever seen before, and I'm not just an instructor, I'm in charge of a whole damn academy. I'm expected to teach the people who taught me basic para-magic! I woke up this morning and thought "I don't know this person lying here."

"I know exactly what you mean!" laughs Selphie "Yesterday I videophoned an old commander I had up in Trabia… and she called me Ma'am."

We all have to smile at the picture of last year's Trabian messenger girl today being saluted.

Irvine sees a break in the conversation and darts off, to return with another tray of drinks. He serves Selphie something clear and reeking of gin, with a cocktail stirrer sticking up out of it. Selphie swigs a mouthful unhesitatingly, and then stiffens abruptly in her seat. Her eyes flicker over to Irvine. For a minute I think he is going to be able to pull it off, then his face creases up, and he bends over in a fit of laughter. Selphie sprays her mouthful of drink all over him. As we sit there laughing, I'm struck by how much the drips running off Irvine's hat look like tears.


	2. Chapter 2

**Selphie**: I have to get a glass of water to clear the taste of gin from my mouth before I can rejoin the others. Honestly, Irvine is impossible sometimes. I get another drink from the bar, a real gin and tonic this time, and then walk back to the others.

Squall is hunched in on himself off to one side, brooding again. Rinoa said he was having trouble letting us go. That's Squall. Spends the present moment worrying about the next one, until it's too late and the present becomes the past. I'll have to see about getting him to cut loose a little tonight.

I feel a little trippy this evening, a little sad, a little happy. Mostly I feel a kind of excited apprehension, that feeling you get when you're looking forward to something big, but aren't quite sure what will happen. Tomorrow I'm going to be seeing friends I haven't spoken to in nearly a year. I'm going home, and not alone. Irvine is coming with me, and he's being shown off to everyone, whether he likes it or not. I'm looking forward to that bit as I sit down again.

I do get a pang of sadness when I think about home the way it was when I last saw it, but it gets brushed away when I think of all the new projects we'll be starting up there. Some of Laguna's Estharian architects have come up with some breath-taking designs. I can hardly wait to get the committees organised. I'm going to try to rope in some of the others tonight. Well, it's as good an excuse as any for a visit, isn't it?

I've been chatting to the others for about ten minutes, trying to think of some way to bring the topic up, when Quistis leans towards me a little unsteadily, and catches my hand. I look up and get a jolt of surprise when I see how dishevelled she looks. Her hair, normally so stylishly arranged, has come undone where one of her pins has fallen- been pulled?- out.

"Selphie, can I speak to you? Outside?" she murmurs quietly into my ear.

Instantly I'm curious as to what she wants to say. Quisty is so completely unlike me in some ways. She bottles up her feelings somewhere inside herself until she can't hold them in any more, and then she just lets them come bubbling up and into the ears of whoever happens to be nearby.

We make our excuses and stand up. Irvine starts up with us, but I wave him away. This is going to be girl talk. Strictly no men allowed. I follow Quisty through the bar's clientele. The crowd certainly has thinned since we got here.

Quistis leads me out to the bar's side doors. The automatic door slides open soundlessly, and we step outside onto the hotel balcony. Blue crystal towers are silhouetted against a pitch black sky. You can't see many stars from Esthar City- too much light pollution. It's still a beautiful sight.

We lean against the balcony wall in silence. Despite the blackness, or maybe because of it, we crane our heads back looking at the stars that have managed to struggle through it. Quistis hasn't said a word since asking me out here. She just wraps a shawl pensively round and round her hands, staring out across the horizon.

"You know," she says suddenly, making me jump, "When we were kids, you were always the bubbly bouncy one, at the centre of everything that was going on. Whatever scrapes the boys got into, you had to go along."

I don't quite know how to reply to that one. Quistis lapses back into silence.

"What kind of kid were you then?" I ask eventually, more to get her to speak, then out of any curiosity.

"Oh," she says with an odd smile "The one with the sticking plasters and the spare tissue wipes."

"Oh," I say quietly.

I sense she wants to talk now, in her own time. Instead of speaking any further, I reach up and unclip the second coil of her hair. Humming, I begin to fashion a braid from the blond tangle. I wish I'd remembered to bring my bag out with me now. There's a good comb inside it.

Quistis tilts her head up to help me with the front strands and carries on talking.

"You're still like that now," she sighs "I mean, you don't know anything about architecture, but the idea of going back to Trabia doesn't even faze you. You're so enthusiastic about it… Oh Selphie, I just wish I had your confidence!"

"I'm not really in charge of the rebuilding project Quist," I remind her gently "I'm just the administrator, the chairperson in some committees-"

"Selphie, I don't want to do this," Quistis tells me abruptly, forcefully "I loved and hated being an Instructor. Oh, I was so proud of it when I got it! I was the youngest ever. It was a position of responsibility, it meant I was trusted. It hurt when I lost it, it hurt me a lot. But… in a way I was relieved as well. It made me, well, more normal I guess, one of the crowd again. I only had to worry about myself and my friends, not constantly about Garden, my reputation, my job…"

She falls silent again, waiting till I fix her new braid with a hair band. Then she turns to look me in the eye. She's been crying a little.

"They'll expect me to give them a miracle, Selphie. What if I can't do that? What if I fail again?"

"Don't take the job then," I say baldly.

"I can't do that either," she laughs a little shakily "I'm Quistis Trepe, the responsible one that everyone sends for when they've got a problem they want solved. I've been watching out for everyone since Sis left, and now I can't stop. I won't let me! It's who I am."

"Quistis," I ask "Why did you ask me out here? What do you want?"

"For someone to talk to," she replies "I wanted to talk to a friend."

I feel a warm glow creep over me at her words, a sudden sense of being trusted and loved. I feel priorities shifting in my head. Thoughts about travel plans and packing slide down the list. Quistis was right. I am the energetic one.

"Thank you. Nobody ever said that to me before," I say quietly.

I settle back against the balcony railing. Listening. I wonder if this is how Quistis always feels.

"Tell me," I say "Everything."


	3. Chapter 3

**Laguna**: I pause in the doorway at the Green Bay bar, Ward's enormous bulk blocking my view of the inside. He hasn't been my bodyguard for years, since the Revolution in fact, but when his mind wanders, his body falls back into old habits.

Not that I am ever in any real danger these days. There hasn't been a serious armed challenge to the Republic for fifteen years, and we've already hunted down the few monsters that broke through the defences during the Lunar Cry. There are always lone nuts of course, but to a para-magic user as powerful as me, the threat from a pistol or a knife is puny.

Ward steps forwards and allows me a view around the bar at last. The place really is getting quiet. The plainclothes Special Protection Force officers must make up almost half the clientele. No wonder the bar manager likes my custom.

My son and his friends are sitting in a circle of chairs up against the far corner of the bar, looking for all the world like just another bunch of kids on a night out. I wonder what a normal father feels when he walks in and sees his son sitting at a bar. Then I worry how Squall will feel seeing me.

Things are very strained between us right now. Being near him reminds me constantly of Raine. She is in the way he stands, his gestures, the way he holds himself while he watches me. I suppose I also find it strange to think of this teenage boy as the ghostly presence that I sometimes felt helping me in battle. Things- mistakes- that are years in the past for me are just recent memories for him. He's not really starting off with any great illusions about me.

I can't believe I'm doing this. Why do I let Kiros talk me into these things?

We start walking across the floor towards the bar. The manager is already waiting for us, with our cues stacked neatly against the plastered wall. He bows gently in greeting then silently passes the cues and chalk over to Kiros. Gallas, my security chief, has already scanned the whole place for explosive molecules and found nothing. As usual. Kiros hands over his Gil card, and it is swiped through the bar's currency unit. A portion of the money stored on the card is automatically electronically transferred to the bar's bank account, exactly as normal. The manager passes us a fistful of tokens to use on the pool table. Okay. Everything is done. It's time for the walk. 

Right.

Kiros and Ward are watching me out of the corner of their eyes. My collar is too tight around my neck. I tug at it futilely. I really need to buy some new clothes, ones that fit. Hyne, I haven't been this nervous since I asked my secretary out. Kiros is laughing at me behind his eyes. Bastard.

I draw a deep breath and square my shoulders. Signalling Kiros to follow me with a sharp jerk of my jaw, I set off towards the pool table at a brisk walk. I haven't got the nerve for this. Squall and three of his friends are sat with their backs to us, chatting away. Two seats in the circle, which I assume belong to the two female SeeDs, are currently empty. We are half-way across the room, and I am just beginning to hope that I can slide past unnoticed…

"Sir Laguna!"

"Hey Squall, what are you doing here?"

…damn.

Selphie and Quistis have turned up at the balcony opening. Selphie's call and Kiros's cheery greeting send heads turning at the SeeD table. My son turns to look at me, exactly as I break my stride to search his face. Our gazes' lock- and straight away my leg buckles under me, sending me sprawling.

"Fuck!"

The pool cue goes flying across the floor as I lunge to Ward for support. The big man deftly catches me around the waist with his cue hand, and waves hello to the SeeDs with the other. I hear a clatter of heels. Squall jumps out of his seat and grabs my other side, helping Ward to support my weight

"Sir Laguna! Are you alright?" demands a worried female voice.

I throw an arm around Ward and allow myself to be guided to Squall's empty seat, my leg still jangling painfully. Its Selphie of course.

"I'm fine," I gasp, eyes searching for Squall again.

He's standing over by the table and watching me with his arms folded, obviously exasperated.

"Laguna, what are you doing here?" he demands, glaring down at me.

Good question.

My mind makes me one of the finest statesmen of my generation. With it, I overthrew Adel, I kept Esthar from starving during the Withdrawal, I initiated the most advanced space programme in the world and I kept brought Esthar through the Cry. Unfortunately my body is a useless quibbling piece of jelly with the instincts of a brick. It makes my leg collapse when I'm trying to ask a certain famous lady pianist if she'd like to go to bed with me. It makes my face twitch and spasm when I'm addressing the Galbadian envoy, so I look like I'm being gently electrocuted as I speak to him.

My mind intends to explain to my son that I've come down here to heal the rift between us, to tell him about his mother and his past, in short to get to know him. Halfway through my larynx, my brain's instructions encounter the surge of adrenaline from my body as it realises I'm sitting right next to Squall, and are promptly hijacked.

"I'm here to hold a national security meeting with Kiros and Ward," I hear myself declare in ringing tones.

Squall looks around the dingy student bar with its handful of dirty customers. The other SeeDs around me look startled at this sudden insight into Esthar's security process. Kiros gently puts one hand over his eyes, while Ward gazes with sudden intensity at the ceiling. Squall's expression doesn't change however. He doesn't even blink.

"I see," he says flatly.

There's a whole conversation in those two words.

"What your Dad is trying to say," Kiros translates wearily "Is that we play pool here most nights. We play doubles, him and Ellone in one team and me and Ward on the other. But Ellone is out of town tonight, so we wondered if you could take her place and play on Laguna's side."

Squall looks like Kiros has just suggested he try mud-wrestling a Grendel. I hope he hasn't guessed we engineered Ellone's absence from our little group deliberately. It's always hard to tell just from Squall's face what he's thinking. From the suspicious look he suddenly shoots me, I think he has tumbled. I gaze cheerfully back up, mouth firmly shut.

"I don't know how to play pool," he stonewalls us "I never learned."

"That's all right," smiles Kiros, entirely unmoved, "Laguna can show you. He's a great teacher."

I'm suddenly enjoying myself immensely, now Squall is the centre of attention. Rinoa is beaming at Squall. I know from speaking to her that the girl is a die-hard romantic. She wants Squall to heal the rift between us, not only for his sake but for hers. If he can do it, then there's a chance she can do the same with her own father. It's deeply unfair of me to manipulate Squall through Rinoa like this, but I find I can't resist it.

"Come on son," I exclaim heartily, slapping him on the shoulder "We can spend some time getting to know one another at least."

I catch Rinoa's eye entreatingly. She stands up and whispers something into his ear. Squall's face assumes a trapped expression. He glances unhappily down at Rinoa who scowls at him and makes little shooing motions with her hands. Squall sighs, and his shoulders sag. That's when I know we've got him.

I pick up my cue and pass it to him. He reaches out and takes it gingerly.

"Right," I say, clapping my hands together briskly "Shall we make a start, my lad?"

Squall's face is a picture. He looks at the cue in his hand, then at the gaming table, then at me. He rolls his eyes heavenwards.

"Lead on then, _Dad_,"

Oh well. It's a start.


	4. Chapter 4

**Irvine:** I walk outside onto the balcony to light the cigarette. The alcohol swims inside my head, giving me a pleasant buzz as I lower my cig to the lighter. Technically it's illegal here, but no-one's going to break my balls about it. Tonight I am everyone's hero. A thousand years ago I'd have been wading through virgin dancing girls while the high priest set about sacrificing some prime red steak. Today they let me indulge my vices in peace.

I saw Quisty and Selphie back in the corner with their heads together. Girl-talk. Quisty had her glasses off, and Selphie was giggling and rummaging around in her bag, probably for those tissues she doesn't think I saw her put in there tonight. Quisty gets wound up over the strangest things. Selphie will let her cry, and smile a lot until she runs out of steam, then start the plotting. Quistus Trepe. The mystic chick who gives lectures on things most of us can't wrap even our imaginations round. I'm fairly sure only she was the only one who understood what the hell we were doing back there. I was just flying about by the seat of my pants. If only she had someone to teach her about being Quistus Trepe.

…

Selphie will kill you if you finish that thought. Hey, at least she doesn't watch people and take notes like Squall, right?

I hear light footsteps on the balcony behind me, high heels clicking with a fast, purposeful stride.

"Oh."

Surprise!

"Hello Irvine," Rin sounds like an awkward school-girl trying not to sound disappointed at her parents' birthday present.

"Sorry, I didn't think anyone was out here."

"Hello yourself."

That sounded too curt. Turn around and try to act nice.

I twist around and smile at her.

"Whoa. Who are you and have you done with Rinoa?"

She is looking good tonight. Her black-brown hair is loose and falling back over her bare shoulders. The dress fastens around the neck, a thigh-length cream-white number that I immediately like, and hanging there I can see the chain she carries her mother's ring from. Griever glints on her right hand and around her left wrist is clasped a delicate little silver bracelet.

Rinoa looks down at herself and back up at me when I speak. Normally she doesn't like the little sallies I make when I don't watch my mouth, but this one makes her smile. She seems glad of the distraction for some reason. She puts her hands on her hips and raises an eyebrow at me.

"Flirting already Irvine? Aren't you worried what I'm going to tell Selphie about you?"

I gesture with the cig; "I'm in shock is all. I think this is the first time I've noticed anyone on the team is female apart from Selphie since the Garden Festival."

I was going to continue but I stop there. It's always a mild surprise when you realize you're unintentionally telling the truth. All the girls have seemed a bit different recently and it suddenly dawns on me why. They're _at ease_. Tonight all problems are strictly personal. I wonder how many people would know how liberating that is. Suddenly here they are; clean, dressed sexily and obsessing about work or boys over the pink gins. And so am I.

…

Wow, this is good beer. I should drink more of it.

She comes up to lean on the balcony next to me, and I hear the heels again. Give me a girl in moccasins any day. I search for something smooth to say and try not to sound annoyed at my interrupted smoke.

"So… get bored of the game?"

"No, I just wanted to leave Squall alone with his dad. He's just starting to open up around Laguna. When Laguna got all worked up over missing that last trick shot I swear he almost smiled."

Strange, she sounds almost put out.

"Squall is enjoying time he's spending with Laguna? Here be miracles."

"Well," she does that over-the-shoulder gesture of hers, then rests her arms more comfortably back on the stonework; "You know Squall, got to be perfect at anything he starts. He hates team games but if it's a skill he can practice himself..."

"Mmm, me and Zell tried to get him into rod-racing last night. He just gave us The Stare."

"Yeah," she said matter-of-factly "I told Laguna he'd go for any game if we all leaned on him at once, and…" she shrugs uncomfortably; "It was what I played with my dad."

I quirk an eyebrow at her; "You steered Squall in here without telling him Laguna was coming? Whoa."

Rinoa cuts me a ferocious sideways look through narrowed eyes.

Oops.

"Are you saying to me that I shouldn't be trying to bring Squall and Laguna back together Kinneas? After all that's happened, after they both nearly died!"

I look away and shift on the balcony. My cig is nearly finished anyway and the stonework is starting to dig uncomfortably into my arms. I'm beginning to want a seat and another drink. I'm not replying to Rin. She's way out of line and she knows it.

"I'm sorry."

Rinoa's started to play with her mother's ring, twisting and looping the chain around her hand; "Irvine, it's just watching the two of them down there…

Ah. It's going to be one of those heart-on-sleeve conversations. I stub out my cig end irritably.

"…I thought it could almost be like making up with _him_. Like, if I could do it for Squall I could do it for me. I thought I would be happy seeing the two of them together, but it made me feel _worse!_"

This last ends in a hiccupped sob as Rinoa comes up off the balcony lip and wraps herself around my chest, while I bring a startled arm up around her shoulders, still half thinking I'm being attacked. She feels light against my chest, soft and warm, and I feel my protective instincts bubbling away, wondering where we'll woolen blankets and big mugs of hot soup at this hour. Then I get another picture, of Squall walking in and seeing this, and I flinch at the empty door.

Damnit… this isn't what I want. This goes beyond our nodding friendship; Rinoa is hijacking Selphie's crying-on-shoulder privileges, and it took me too long to get her believing I'd stopped chasing tail.

This last thought makes me gently disengage myself, though in truth by now she is just drying her face on my shirt. I settle for an awkward pat on the shoulder to cover the moment.

"Sorry Rin, but Selphie..."

She has a last sniff and flicks her hair out of her eyes. I get a watery grin; "Keeps you on a short leash, yeah."

There is an awkward pause in the conversation, neither of us is really sure where to take it from here. I tap out a new cigarette from my packet. I feel I need it.

Rinoa breaks the silence while I light it; "Irvine, you were at Galbadia Garden when you trained, weren't you?"

"Yah, at the proper military academy, not like the rest of these slackers."

"Do you remember General Caraway much? What was he like?"

I remember a tall, gaunt man with a tanned craggy face sporting Rinoa's eyebrows.

"He inspected us a few times when he was representing the Galbadian army," I say slowly "Checking up on their investment for them I suppose. He took us out on maneuvers a few times too. He was quite strict about parades, appearances, stuff like that, but I got the idea he was a good commander to have."

"A good commander," Rinoa laughs humorlessly "You sounded just like him then, that fucking rating everyone by their military skills, that was him every time."

That gets to me I have to admit- as if I'm anywhere near as anal as Rin's father! However I take a drag on the cig and exhale before I reply. Cool guys don't snap back.

"Rin, I only met your father four times in my entire life, and every one of those was a military mission or a training exercise. What did you expect me to know about him? That he needs work on his table manners?"

Rinoa slides down onto the floor and, keeping her legs together, rests her head and arms on the platform of her knees. Good thing this floor is polished black marble.

"I don't know," she says "Its just he treats me like a child. He always thinks he knows what's best for everyone and he's so used to getting his own way that when we have an argument, he just tells me what to do and what to think! He's so stubborn… what? Why are you laughing?"

I pull my hat off and shake out my hair. Meeting Rinoa's eyes, I flutter my lashes at her and clasp my hands together entreatingly. Pouting, I pitch my voice high;

"Like me, like me, like me!"

Rinoa blushes very prettily, you know.

"That bastard," an unwilling smile crooks her face "When did he tell you about that?"

"Aah, we got drunk in the Balamb hotel when we holed up there one night and I asked him how you'd met."

"It was the first time I had champagne," she pulls a face "I think I got a little drunk."

"Yeah…" I settle down for once in my life and try to remember what I'd been about to say; "…look Rinoa, I don't know anything about your problems with your dad," I trace a circle vaguely through the air with the cig "I've never known anything about fathers, never needed to know about one either."

"Never needed to know? Don't you want to know who your parents were then?" she asks, looking up quizzically.

"Not particularly," I say "Why go raking up old tragedies? I'm sure they did their best for me, whoever they were. But I don't feel the need to go looking for them. It's Squall you should be talking to; he's the only one of us in the same situation."

"He hasn't solved it any better then I have!"

I inhale the last vapors of the second cig. Only one left in the packet now, and you can't buy them here.

"No…" and maybe it's that last cigarette, but I feel inspiration steal through me with the smoke "…but I can think of a spiky-haired blond tekninja who has; in fact he's off to see them tomorrow."

"_Zell?_"


	5. Chapter 5

**Zell: **Man, I've got that electric feeling running through my body; I'm tingling with the current. I've made the call.

Whoo-whee!

Shadow boxing helps calm me down. I do it a lot, mostly like now, when I'm bouncing with so much balled-up energy I think my head might launch off. I'm grinning too hard. It grips my face like a vice as I work through my routine on the hotel steps, pushing myself. Snapping out those kicks faster, driving those punches harder;

Tomorrow

_Snap_

I

_Snap_

am

_Crack_

going

_Smack_

Home!

Launch off the crouch, triple flip slicing up through the air.

"_Whoa!_"

I loose a spark of Float and stay high, grinning down at a dishevelled Kinneas while he glares back up at me. I think the updraft might have knocked his hat off.

"Zell, what did I tell you about pulling that Zen-master ninja routine around me!"

He picks his hat up and dusts at it disgustedly. I don't know what he's wiping off. The floors out here are the same weird shade of clean as the rest of Esthar City. I haven't bothered watching out for Selphie's spat gum for a week.

Rinoa steps through the sliding doors after Irvine, out into the slippery steps that climb up onto the passage level. This side entrance leads straight out to the wall of the city. Kilometres below us, you can see the plain spreads out to the horizon. Gotta love the views here. I guess Rinoa's seen the whole hat thing through the glass- she's got that hand of hers across her mouth. We share a smirk as Irvine fusses with his hair, trying to get his hat cocked the angle he likes it.

I let the Float wear out and sink gently groundwards onto the steps next to him. As I land my nose gets a pungent whiff coming off him.

"Dude, isn't that illegal here?"

Irvine squints and scowls at me.

"Yes!"

Man, he's uptight, and it ain't the hat that's got all those feathers ruffled either. Why is Princess with him? I frown slightly at them. She hugs herself and looks aside, down at the polished stairs we're all standing on. Thinking on how to put something.

"You're going home tomorrow, right?" Irvine prompts, breaking the ice. We ain't at our best when we're leaving people.

I trade a grin and treat them to my version of a cheerleader routine- jig about on the spot waving imaginary pom-poms; "Man, Laguna had a special space-plane flight chartered just for me. I'm getting sun, sea, sand and two weeks of Ma's blueberry pies!"

Ma hates blueberries and never has them in the house.

"Gah," Irvine pulls a wry face "I'm spending two weeks in a building site so Selphie can show off her new trophy-boy to everyone in Trabia Garden."

Rinoa breaks into our banter at last, reaching out and tugging at my sleeve; "Zell, what time is the flight?"

I raise my right wrist and show her the SeeD tracelet strapped there, giving my best Diablos smile; "Eleven o'clock sharp. I just got off the portable to my mum. Dad's driving out in the new Trevis XV to pick me up. She said he's going to let me see how it handles on the way back. Don't worry; we got plenty of time for one last beer run!"

"Yeah."

I have a feeling my good mood ain't going to last much longer.

Her eyes seem to glitter at mine and for a moment I can sense the Sorceress lodged inside stirring. I look away from them quickly. Some things break even ninja focus, dude.

"Zell, we need to talk. I need you to help me with something and I might need a guy's opinion. Irvine's useless-"

"Thanks!"

Oh brother, this one came in right off my radar. I gotta get my piece in now, before I get dragooned into acting go-between.

"That ain't my arena, Rinoa. I never do relationship advice, especially when it's friends dating. Which you guys have since the ring thing- the thing that almost got me torched, man," I make a hopeful flapping gesture with my hands, "Maybe you can talk to Selphie?"

I'm glancing at Irvine for help here, and he's avoiding my gaze deliberately, the greasy cowboy bastard.

Rinoa frowns, put out at me for cutting her off; a picture flashes through my brain of her pouting and stamping on my foot. Weird thoughts, dude.

"Zell, this has nothing to do with Squall and me," she snaps "We're perfectly fine. Stop leaping about and listen for once in your life!"

"Rinoa wants to patch things up with her pa," drawls Irvine "She thinks you can help her with that."

What? What cracked switchboard re-routed that call to my number, man?

"Uhhh…"

Rinoa takes over with a shake of her head to Irvine; she's going to speak for herself on this one.

"You fell out with your parents didn't you Zell?" she asks impatiently "Irvine said they threw you out when you were in a gang. But now everything's fine. How did you do it? Did you change, or did they take you back?"

Diablos' burning balls.

Oh no, dude. This is not a conversation you and me are having. Not here, not ever. I pin her with my stare, and I _know_ I've got this look in my eye, because even Princess falters for a minute. Irvine stirs nervously between us, fingers curling unconsciously for a cigarette.

Man. I don't think I've ever dented Rinoa's self-assurance before.

"You're asking me a lot questions I don't know if I want to answer," I tell her straight.

She takes a deep breath and starts again. What is it with Rinoa that she always pushes the questions she finds people don't want to answer?

"Until we all met," She includes the hotel and Irvine with a sweep of her hand, "I spent my time trying to make my father's life as unhappy as he'd made mine. Now... I'm just not Rinoa Heartly anymore. I've saved the world. I've become a Sorceress. I'm in love. Somewhere along the way I got bigger."

Now she's lost me. Weren't we talking about me a minute ago?

Irvine is shaking his head at her; "Nah, you were just born noble crusader for losers and lost causes," he says with a sly sideways look. Which gets him a firework smile, there and gone again.

Dude, you had no business telling her these things about me.

"Whatever," she says, and continues past him; she's lit up inside now, like one of those Estharian paper lanterns, "This doesn't change the facts. He and I, we're locked together over Timber still. Independence is coming, the only question is how. It's better if I can really talk to him, Zell, so he listens to me. Carroways have been redrawing lines on the map for centuries. If there's fighting…" Rinoa shakes her head at me, and her hair twitches like a curtain caught by the breeze, "I will if I have to. But we'll never speak again."

I reach up and trace the tattoo that scrawls down my face from my temple to my jaw, remembering the first time I'd woken up with it. Man, there was a bad day. Real downer in fact.

"Zell, I don't think there's anything magic that you're going to tell me, I just want a story that'll make me feel better because I'll know that someone, somewhere, got it right once."

I crack my knuckles and try not to chew my lip. Man, that whole last speech was pure Rinoa. Throw a block in her way and you're not fighting with her, you're fighting with her helping the world.

"Please?"

Man, sometimes you gotta realise that the fighting with yourself is just prolonging the agony over something you know you're already going to do. How does someone learn to broadcast that much naked appeal with their face?

"All right! Hyne! But it ain't very interesting… so don't _ever_ tell anyone else. You're buying the beer."

The firework smile lights up her face again.

"Of course."

Now that's something I can agree with.


	6. Chapter 6

The man lay face down midway up the frozen mountainside, the snow crushed by his impact. Around him the full fury of the blizzard continued unabated. The ice seared his skin through the thin fabric of his clothes. A lesser being would have been dead in minutes, frozen from exposure then buried under the snow. But then a lesser man would never have survived the plunge through the concealed crevice, or the titanic energies that had been unleashed upon him. And he had survived.

It was the flapping of his grey trench coat in the gale that called him back to hateful wakefulness, but he first moved, it was on instinct. His mind was fled elsewhere, his gaze unseeing. He watched the rocky mountainside but it did not register with him. Later, his recollections will be fractured and rudimentary. He would remember crawling under the lip of the ledge for shelter. But he would not remember packing the snow around himself to insulate his body from the wind, nor exhausting his stock of drawn cure spells fighting the frost.

Within him a place was empty. He could no longer feel her intoxicating presence inside. She was gone, he knew it intuitively. A Knight's bond with his Sorceress is only completely broken by the death of one of them. She was a wisp now, a memory, nothing more. She had been taken from him, his other half. He could no longer feel her in his mind, no longer hear her voice. Could no longer touch her, her husk lying outside time. His mind struggled with the knowledge, unwilling to comprehend it.

Memories seeped back, tormenting him. He saw again the Castle outside time, at the height of the battle. He had stepped forward, outwardly contemptuous, to meet the challenge of the invaders, his worthless former comrades. Inwardly his heart had been beating however. He had faced the Children of Destiny twice before and failed her both times. It had been his final chance to prove himself in her eyes.

The battle had barely begun when the Guardian Force Odin appeared, and galloped his spirit mount straight at the Fire Cross Knight. Seifer had crushed the GF the under his blade. He remembered savoring the satisfaction of forcing the arrogant spirit knight to acknowledge a human truly his superior as a warrior.

He had turned on the others then, anticipating the golden triumph which lay ahead for him. He would crush the Aspects of Hyne and the others, and then he would join with Ultimecia in her destruction of Hyne's feeble creation. They would jointly inherit the void that remained, the creations that outstripped their creator. They would be locked together, alone in an eternal embrace, the Maimed Goddess and the Warrior, needing no other. Knowing no other.

The momentary hesitation had proved to be his undoing. The spirit of Odin had risen and faced him again. This time he had not prevailed. Gilamesh had struck him a mortal blow, and he had fallen to the floor, fading.

His last direct contact with her in the dying moments before he fell back into time had torn at him. Her scorn at his failure had lashed his pride. _Weakling_. But pitiful as she thought him, he had caught an undercurrent of something else at the very end. A strange rush of sensations had tumbled from her mind into his as she prepared to make her last stand against her enemies. Disdain at his weakness. Fear at his fall. Despair at her approaching end. And…wistfulness. A wish for what could have been. It had astonished the fading Seifer to learn that Ultimecia had daydreamed.

He had reappeared on this desert mountainside, his wounds vanished. He was alone on the barren slope. But his contact to the events inside the Throne room was not broken; he was still her Knight. Inside his mind he had felt the thoughts and emotions of Ultimecia as she faced the Children of Destiny. The Sorceress's last moments where filled with despair. Twice she slew the heroes facing her, and twice they rose again, up on the fiery wings of a Phoenix.

Seifer had felt her disbelief at their power. The supremely confident Ultimecia had never really cared about the old tales that had filtered down the centuries, about the defeat of a Sorceress outside of time, by mere mercenaries. Forewarned was forearmed she had thought. With complete cynicism, she had thought to fatally divide the Children, by seizing their adopted mother's body, and thereby twisting some to her will.

Seifer had seen clearly then. She had set a trap for them, and of all of them, only he had fallen into it. She had exploited his romantic dreams of Knighthood, his ambition for rank and a command and his towering arrogance. He had found his SeeD superiors staggeringly dull. They had had no imagination about the battles they fought in. No great cause stirred ardent passions in their breast. They had lived and died concerned solely about report deadlines, training schedules or contract bonuses. Seifer's soul had been outraged. What about honor, glory, championing a higher cause? His ambitions for a place in SeeD constantly floundered on their insistence on petty regulations his ideals did not allow him to follow. He had thought himself too good to follow their orders anyway. Surely such rules did not apply to Seifer Almasy! No, she had told him. You are special. Gifted. Follow me….

Now he found the one he had chosen to serve had deceived him. Tricked him out of his place in the ranks of the heroes. He had followed her blindly, for this. Shame and anger had welled up in him. He had been betrayed.

WHY!

Ultimecia had frozen in her battle with the two remaining SeeDs. Her casting of Curse was fractionally, fatally, delayed by Seifer's mental wail. Squall had unleashed Renzokuken. Lionheart had plunged through Ultimecia's unarmoured chest. Seifer had felt her shock and the searing pair as the blade pierced her. He had also shared why she had frozen. The mad Sorceress, whose keenest ambition had been to destroy the whole world, had felt guilty. Guilty about using a lover whose ambitions had burned as strongly as hers, whose total dedication to her had meant no depth was too low to stoop to if it would serve her cause.

Seifer had been rocked by the successive emotional waves. As Ultimecia lay at dying at Squall's feet she had touched her Knight through their fading link. She had reached to him for comfort at the end, blocking her fear as the darkness came to claim her. Knowing it was the end, Seifer had buried all his other feelings deep within himself, and radiated comfort and love until his Knight's pathways had snapped. He learnt what it was like to lose half your mind then. He had snapped and fled, blind in the dark, and had plunged down through the snow that hid a sharp crevice.

He had stopped running then.

Memory stopped and time began again. He gazed around himself, and found he was lying at the centre of a circle of steaming rock. The snow had evaporated, the rock blackened by the power he had lashed out with in his delirium, when he alternated between grief and fury in the night. Seifer hauled himself upright, and stared up at the blue sky. The dawn chorus sounding in his ears carried on a fresh breeze that rustled his overcoat.

It all seemed strangely remote. He was thinking. He knew she wasn't here anymore; he didn't have a task anymore. Still, he kept expecting to hear her thoughts. He was still listening for her commands to lend his existence purpose. And nothing came. His pathways where red-raw where they had been broken. They would start to heal closed soon, unless he exercised through the pain to keep them open.

His thoughts drifted back to the time before her; the directionless anger, the endless frustrations, the isolation. He wouldn't go back to that. He might have been cast down to a fugitive, with out even a body to honor, but he couldn't go back to that purposeless existence. She had shown him another way, a better one. He would find closure honoring her in that. As a Knight he had failed. As an avenger he would not. He was Seifer Almasy. His foes had never dared face him single-handed. Not even the other Knight.

Seifer marvelled at the clarity of his new thinking. He focused on his new reason for carrying on. Every decision would now be weighed against the new cause. Squall must die. By Seifer's hand.

The man pushed himself up off the mountain floor, and stood shakily. He would get off this mountain, and he would plan this. Carefully. He was Seifer Almasy. He was Seifer Almasy, and he was not allowed to lose. It was not right.

THE END

(Four Blue Corners is set in the night/day/night period right after the last battle. It was an old unfinished story of mine and it's been great fun finishing it. But Ithink everyone should stop on a high, andI wanted this to bea shortfic when I started writing it. Plans to dust off another unfinished storyof mine, which includes all this, already swirling about my head.)


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